NOS4A2(89)

Vic’s breathing echoed raggedly in the barnlike interior of the Shorter Way Bridge, unchanged in the sixteen years since she had last seen it.

She shivered, clammy in her bulky motorcycle jacket.

“Not real,” she said, and shut her eyes.

She heard the gentle, dry rustling of the bats overhead.

“Not real,” she said.

White noise hissed softly, just on the other side of the walls.

Vic concentrated on her own breath, inhaling slowly and steadily, then exhaling again through pursed lips. She stepped off the bike and stood beside it, holding it up by the handlebars.

She opened her eyes but kept her gaze pointed at her feet. She saw the boards, old, grayish brown, worn. She saw flickering static between the planks.

“Not real,” she said for a third time.

She closed her eyes again. She wheeled the bike around, to face back the way she had come. Vic began to walk. She felt the boards sink under her feet, under the weight of the little Triumph Bonneville. Her lungs were tight, and it was hard to draw a full breath, and she felt sick. She was going to have to go back to the mental hospital. She was not going to get to be Wayne’s mother after all. At this thought she felt her throat constrict with grief.

“This is not real. There is no bridge. I am off my meds and seeing things. That’s all.”

She took one step and another step and another and then opened her eyes again and was standing with her broken motorcycle in the road.

When she turned her head and looked back over her shoulder, she saw only highway.





The Lake House


THE LATE-AFTERNOON FOG WAS A CAPE THAT FLAPPED OPEN TO ADMIT Vic McQueen and her mean machine, then flapped shut behind her, swallowing even the sound of the engine.

“Come on, Hooper,” Wayne said. “Let’s go in.”

Hooper stood on the margin of the road, staring at him uncomprehendingly.

Wayne called again when he was in the house. He held the door open, waiting for his dog to come to him. Instead Hooper turned his big, shaggy head and peered back along the road—not in the direction Wayne’s mother had ridden but the other way.

Wayne couldn’t tell what he was looking at. Who knew what dogs saw? What the shapes in the mist meant to them? What odd, superstitious notions they might hold? Wayne was certain dogs were as superstitious as humans. More, maybe.

“Suit yourself,” Wayne said, and shut the door.

He sat in front of the TV with his iPhone in one hand and texted with his dad for a few minutes:

Are u at the airport yet?

Yep. They pushed my flight back to 3 so I’m going to be sitting here awhile.

That sux. What r u gonna do?

Gonna hit the food court. Gonna hit it so hard it CRIES.

Mom got the bike going. She’s out riding around.

She wearing her helmet?

Yes. I made her. Coat too.

Good for you. That coat adds +5 to all armor rolls.

LOL. I love u. Have a safe flight.

If I die in a plane crash remember to always bag and board your comics. Love you too.

Then there was nothing more to say. Wayne reached for the remote control, switched on the TV, found SpongeBob. His official stance was that he had grown out of SpongeBob, but with his mother gone he could dispense with the official stance and do what he liked.

Hooper barked.

Wayne got up and went to the picture window, but he couldn’t see Hooper anymore. The big dog had vanished into the watery white vapor.

He listened intently, wondering if the bike was coming back. It felt as if his mother had been gone longer than five minutes.

His eyes refocused, and he saw the TV reflected in the picture window. SpongeBob was wearing a scarf and talking to Santa Claus. Santa stuck a steel hook through SpongeBob’s brains and threw him into his bag of toys.

Wayne jerked his head around, but SpongeBob was talking to Patrick and there wasn’t any Santa Claus.

He was on his way back to the couch when he heard Hooper at the front door at last, his tail going thump, thump, thump, just as it had that morning.

“Coming,” he said. “Hold your horses.”

But when he opened the door, it wasn’t Hooper at all. It was a short, hairy, fat man in a tracksuit, gray with gold stripes, the sleeves pushed back to show his forearms. His head was a patchy bristle, as if he had mange. His eyes protruded from above his broad, flattened nose.

“Hello,” he said. “Can I use your phone? We’ve had a terrible accident. We’ve just hit a dog with our car.” He spoke haltingly, like a man reading his lines from a cue card but having trouble making out the words.

“What?” Wayne asked. “What did you say?”

The ugly man gave him a worried look and said, “Hello? Can I use your phone. We’ve had a terrible accident? We’ve just hit a dog. With our car!” They were all the same words, but with emphasis in different places, as if he were not sure which sentences were questions and which were declarations.

Wayne looked past the ugly little man. Back down the road, he saw what looked like a dirty roll of white carpet lying in front of a car. In the pale, drifting smoke, it was hard to see either the car or the white mound clearly. Only it wasn’t a roll of carpet, of course. Wayne knew exactly what it was.

“We didn’t see it, and it was right in the road. We hit it with our car,” the little man said, gesturing over his shoulder.